Wednesday, 1 March 2017

That 'Bluidy Mackenzie' made some good decisions!

It's Wednesday and it's March 1st!

I was looking for a topic to write for my blog post at Writing Wranglers and Warriors blog today and wasn't inspired by what I started with. In my indecision, I googled what happened in history on March 1st with a specific focus on Scottish history. Here's what I came up with...that I was much happier to work on.

This is almost a reblog of my Wranglers post but I want the content to be accessible to me on this, my own blog, as well.

Internet research sites.

I’m regularly accessing sources of historical information
from various internet sites as I write my historical adventures. Often a simple
question will have me digressing for hours as I latch onto
something only vaguely related to my initial inquiry, but which in its own
right is engrossing.

Over the last number of years, I’ve found it increasingly easier to
access useful information from highly respected sites because that information
has been gradually released for public use. Just days ago, I picked up a prompt
from an author colleague that more visual information had been released via The
National Library of Scotland, specifically photographs of my birth city of
Glasgow which were taken during the 1860s.

http://digital.nls.uk/learning/thomas-annan-glasgow/explore/page-1/

Though the photos indicate the
absolute squalor that existed in the slums of Glasgow, they’ll be very useful
for one of my writing projects that I temporarily shelved some months ago in
favour of my most current writing. Viewing the portfolio of photographs made me
appreciate how much information they contain and which I can access free of
charge.

I’ve been to many public buildings in Edinburgh but not to the National Library of Scotland.
It’s possible to get a reader’s ticket for entry to some of their ‘lending’
rooms but that’s only practical if you live around our capital city. However, I
have been using the online sources for years now and love how useful it can be.
What I’ve never thought about before is how long the library has been
functioning and who started it.

According to
one historical events site it was the day that the library started though not
called ‘National’ at that time.

Sir George Mackenzie was the current Lord
Advocate, a member of the Scottish Parliament. He was
also a member of the Privy Council of Scotland which meant advising the
monarch, an extremely exalted position to hold.

He was reputed to be a learned man with literal tendencies.
He wrote several books and essays—legal and political and antiquarian.

Sir George Mackenzie

As Dean
of the Faculty of Advocates he was the founder of The Library of the Faculty of
Advocates in 1682.

By 1689 the building was formally inaugurated and the collection of
works grew and grew.

In 1710, The Copyright Act meant the Library had the legal right
to claim a copy of every book written in Britain.

The collection continued
and eventually outgrew its original building.

In 1925 the collection became the
National Library of Scotland, formalised by an Act of the UK Parliament. Since
then the collection has been housed and re-housed in different places and we
are now fortunate that much of it is available to the public online.

That’s all commendable but where does the ‘Bluidy’ Mackenzie
bit come from. As well as being a man of letters, Mackenzie was also in a
position of power during many of the Scottish Witch trials that I’ve blogged about earlier. He was also responsible for persecution of many of the
Covenanters, sending large numbers to a nasty death, their tortured bodies buried
near the Covenanter’s Prison.

Sir George Mackenzie is also buried close by in Greyfriars Kirkyard and it’s no real surprise that
thousands of tourists flock past his 'Black Mausoleum' as they enter into a ‘Graveyard
Tour of Edinburgh’. There’s a heavy chain kept in place by a stout padlock
across the door which is said is there - not to keep the dead in, but to keep the
living out!

I took a Graveyard Tour some years ago and it can be a
creepy experience.

This post will tell you a whole lot more about adventures in Greyfriars Kirkyard.